Monday, May 25, 2009

An Education, In the Loop and Anna Wintour @ MIFF

Good news Melbourne film fans, MIFF released their online mini-mag today, which lists a tiny fraction of the titles that have so far been selected to show at the film festival in July/August. There are some excellent-sounded titles already and hopefully plenty more.

Joining opening and closing night titles Balibo and Bran Nue Dae will be one of Sundance's big winners and sure-to-be Oscar bound An Education. Starring Carey Mulligan from a screenplay by Nick Hornby, this 1961-set film has caused quite a stir already and it will be nice to try and see it before the American awards season starts and we, inevitably, have to wait to see it during its theatrical run.

Other titles such as In the Loop, based on the UK TV series, and The Secret Lives of Pippa Lee, with a great cast that includes Robin Wright Penn, Julianne Moore, Monica Bellucci, Winona Ryder, Alan Arkin and Maria Bello, sound promising. Also screening will be Henry Sellick's Coraline in all of it's 3D glory as part of the Next Gen division. Meanwhile the Night Shift section of the program will provide audiences in need for a good fright plenty to scream about Titles playing include Martyres, Eden Lake and Black Dynamite.

Documentaries include The September Issue, which follows Vogue Magazine editor-in-chief Anne Wintour as she and her many staff prepare for the famous "September Issue", the most glamourous edition of the magazine all year. If Valentino: The Last Emperor also screened then fashionistas would definitely be in for a treat! Little Joe is about Joe Dassesandro, beefcake muse to Andy Warhol and there is also Theater of War, which goes behind the scenes of a Brecht play as performed by Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline. Streep is notorious for not wanting cameras to follow her around behind the scenes so it would be a treat to see. I Need That Record is a part of the wonderful "Backbeat" sub-section, which focuses on films about music, and revolves around the dying breed that is the record store.

Check out the website for updates and hopefully some even better titles will appear in the full festival guide on July 10.

4 comments:

I think the NextGen titles look a little weak, but that's par for the course at MIFF. Cheeky Girls screened recently at the Festival of German Films and looks mediocre while Coraline gets a commercial release.

I'm particularly interested in the Anna Karina retrospective and the films by Claire Denis, Kirokazu Kore-eda and (maybe) Agnès Varda.

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